The Stem of the Problem

Our vacation trip to Santa Fe was punctuated by an historical moment in Washington, DC when the president issued his first veto in six years in office. After signing countless pieces of legislation sent to him from a Reb congress and after issuing almost 150 veto threats that sent the White House and the Hill in search of compromise, the president finally found a bill that was so bad for the country that it couldn’t be negotiated with his own party leadership. The ominous evil that he struck down was increased funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Of all the issues that could have come to this end it is hard to believe that medical research intended to dramatically improve the lives and relieve the suffering of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans, not to mention their family members, and not to mention what that research could deliver to the rest of the world, could fall victim to a presidential veto. But, we should have expected no less from a man who has made and almost assuredly will continue to make a number of infamous entries in the historical ledger.

This wasn’t just another garden-variety veto. This one overrode a significant bipartisan vote in both houses of congress at a time when bipartisanship gets spotted in the nation’s capitol about as often as a bald eagle is found perched on Abe’s shoulder in the Lincoln Memorial. Almost two-thirds of the Senate approved this bill. More importantly, the most recent polls reveal that no less than 72% of Americans, people of all political stripes, favor this legislation. That support arises from the fact that there are precious few families in the country who don’t have a family member whose life could be saved by results of this research.

But, this isn’t just another garden-variety president. This is a president who recently declared in a Larry King interview that the opinion of the American people doesn’t matter to him; that he pays no attention to it; that he must lead as he and he alone sees fit. We’ll see how that works out for his Reb colleagues come the first Tuesday in November when those slighted Americans get a chance to express their opinion in a way that can’t be ignored by anyone in politics. I doubt that the other members of the Reb leadership would be as dismissive of public opinion in a government that styles itself as a representative democracy.

The bill in question provided that the embryos that could be used for stem cell research must be those that would otherwise be unused and discarded. Said another way, not a single one of these embryos would become an infant in the womb; not a single one would be born into this world; not a single one would receive a name and live a life. Said another way, every one of these embryos will be tossed in the trash or sent to the incinerator as medical waste. The president spoke of not being able to support any bill that would “take” a human life, ignoring the fact that, accepting for the moment that an embryo is a human life, every one of these human lives will be taken one way or the other. The question is about the waste of those human lives.

Given the choice of discarding an embryo and using it to hopefully save or dramatically improve another human life, it is beyond me how someone can choose to throw it away. What is being saved or protected by that waste? How can an opponent of this research claim to support a culture of life when they turn a cold shoulder to the lives of those already living with diseases and crippling disabilities that could be relieved through this research? What is it that staunch conservatives like Bill Fritch, Orrin Hatch, and Nancy Reagan can see that another conservative like George Bush cannot see? They see people with Parkinson’s disease; people with Alzheimer’s; people with spinal-cord injuries; and young people with juvenile diabetes. The president doesn’t see these people; the president ignores these people with the same dismissive attitude that he has about American public opinion. He claims to be pro-life; but pro-whose-life?
Unfortunately, this ignorance is being dressed up, once again, in the “family values” garb when it is far more a matter of pandering to the Religious Right in an election year. The president and his advisors fear that they are about to preside over the kind of power shift that was presided over by Bill Clinton when the Rebs took control of the Hill in 1994. To protect against the possibility of this ignoble entry in the historical record they are doing everything possible to shore of the uber-conservatives by playing again and again to the drum-beating, pulse-raising issues of gay marriage, flag burning, abortion and stem cell research. This time, the panicked bow to the far right may cause the GOP to tip over.

This veto doesn’t have anything to do with honoring, respecting or saving innocent human lives. In fact, this veto stands for dishonoring, disrespecting and failing to try to save millions of innocent human lives as it blithely turns away from watching the lab techs who will now dispose of leftover embryos that will never live to serve humanity in any way. That’s a shameful waste.